FIL

At nightfall, after a rather sultry day, in a small station on the Braşov-Cluj line in Transylvania, I was waiting for the express train to Budapest… I did not have to wait too long… the train arrived… I picked up my travelling bag and climbed into the nearest second

My friend Mr. Manolache Cuvidi is a well-known character in our society; he is a man of substance, his rather comfortable wealth has been earned through honest work; he's an intelligent and earnest fellow, an ideal husband and an ideal father of a family. Given so many

It's during the summer months, when public services open at 7 in the morning and close at 2 p. m. The night was sultry and now the sun has risen in the clear sky, threatening to scorch everything and everybody. Just think of what it it's going to be at noon? It

There was once an old woman who had three sons, tall like steeples and of virtue mighty but dumb as fishes. The old woman had a plentiful household, with a fine piece of land, a stout manor and annexes, a vineyard and nice orchard, cattle and lots of poultry. Besides all

excerpts · Formerly people used to go to Paris to learn law; now they learn it in prison. · The newborn boy now must have four hands: one for the cigarette, one for the playing cards, a third one for the latest ointment, and the fourth for the ball and cue. · Since the

One fair day the sultan walked about his cityPlain in dress, together with his high vizier. On the spot he noticed lying in the gutterA dime which he, stooping, picked up in great haste. The vizier, who witnessed this parsimonyMade so bold in asking of his majesty:'Please

CANTO THE TENTHArgument Considering the counsel vainOf all the rank and file, The Gypsies chose those of schooled brainTo gather for a whileAnd judge what government is goodFor the entire Gypsihood.  1Now when the maw is well provided for,The mouth is ready and the tongue

Simplicity is not an end in art, but one arrives at simplicity in spite of oneself, in approaching the real sense of things. Simplicity is at bottom complexity and one must be nourished on its essence to understand its significance. Catalog of Brâncuşi exhibition, Brummer

The founder of the Theater of the Absurd (with The Bald Soprano, staged in 1950 by Nicolas Bataille at the Theatre des Noctambules in Paris, a play he had begun in the 40s while still in Romania under the title English without a Teacher), a member of the French Academy from

Honestly, Corneille bores me. We probably only love him (without believing in him) out of habit. We are forced to. They imposed him on us in school. I cannot stand Schiller. For a long time I thought Marivaux' plays were unserious games. Musset's comedies are thin,

Sometimes I happen to have beautiful utopian dreams. Sometimes I dream that it was not Lenin in that sealed car crossing Germany and going to Russia in 1917, rather there were three or four odious American capitalists: Russia, Europe would have been saved. Imagine all those

I see literature as a mere social occupation and those who do literature as a mere guild, such as shoemaking, binding books, law, politics, carpentry, and so on. No other guild is as vain and presumptuous as the poets'. The shoemaker does not claim he does a metaphysical